Hamilton-Wenham boys lacrosse team defeats Newburyport for North championship

Saturday

Jun 7, 2014 at 10:36 PMJun 8, 2014 at 9:43 PM

By Joshua Boydjboyd@wickedlocal.com

Lacrosse is very much a team game, but sometimes that one individual rises up and takes control.In the first half, Matt Curran was everywhere for Hamilton-Wenham, but most importantly, he was most often found in front of Newburyport’s goal, scoring.Curran scored five first half goals in the Generals’ 7-6 win over Newburyport to claim the Division 3 North boys lacrosse championship on June 7 in Newburyport."It was by far, the biggest game of my life," said Curran, a senior captain for the Generals. "Coach [Josh Wedge] told us all week to shoot high on this goalie. He tends to crouch down when you get in close on him. I just kept that in mind every time I drove the net, and it worked out.""[Curran] carried us," Wedge added. "I was literally begging everyone to give him some help. He was playing 1-on-10 out there. If it wasn’t for him, the game is probably over at halftime. We’re going to need a much better effort in the next game against whoever we play."That would be Cohasset. Hamilton-Wenham and Cohasset will play Wednesday evening at Woburn High School. Start time is to be determined.The Generals and Clippers traded goals throughout the game, typically on runs. Newburyort enjoyed a run of three goals bridging the first and second quarters, and the Generals scored four in a row to finish its scoring for the afternoon.At 7-4 in the fourth quarter, Newburyport’s Michael Shay answered a goal by the Generals’ Brian Shaw to make it 7-5 with 10:41 remaining.Matthew Cote brought Newburyport to within a goal with 9:24 remaining. They had several chances the rest of the way to tie and force overtime, or even to win in regulation.Hamilton-Wenham went a man down at 7:30 remaining. Hamilton-Wenham goalie and captain Grant Thompson came up big during that situation, and a couple minutes after the man-down, when Ben Mirageas put a hard shot on net.The Clippers saw a 2-on-1 break fall to pieces. First, Shay picked off a Hamilton-Wenham pass, and sent the stolen ball to Brendan Barraclough. Barraclough dropped the ball close to the net, and tried to tap it over to Shay. He couldn’t get a handle on it, and Thompson scooped it up and Hamilton-Wenham was out of danger again.Game-saving takeaways from Generals defender and captain Jimmy Littlefield and midfielder John Henry Bahr.Bahr’s takeaway came with under a minute remaining, and the Generals were able to kill the clock the rest of the way."We’ve never gone this far as a program," said an emotional Drew Bourdreau, co-captain of Newburyport. "Every single player stepped up and gave all they had. We had one loss at home and two losses total. In 12 years of program history, this was the best team. A lot of our defenders haven’t even played defense before this year. I’m really proud of them."There was a little vengeance on the minds of Hamilton-Wenham, which fell to Newburyport in double-overtime during the regular season."It feels good to come back on their own field and beat them," said Curran. There were several similarities between the two teams, mainly their defense."We both have very skilled long poles on defense," he said. "Both of our offenses kind of struggled today.""We felt like us and them were the two best teams in Division 3 North," added Wedge. "We could play them 10 times and it could be 5-5."Along with Shay’s and Cote’s second-half goals, Newburyport also got first half scores from Shay, Bourdreau (off a great inside pass from Barraclough), Mirageas and Barraclough.Griffin Weber had the only other first half goal that wasn’t scored by Curran for Hamilton-Wenham, immediately after a big, diving save by Thompson.